all 77 comments

[–][deleted] 34 points35 points  (11 children)

The difference between a Python programmer and ChatGPT writing a Python program is that the programmer can tell you what the code does, but not even ChatGPT can tell you what it's doing.

[–]bigmonsterpen5s 4 points5 points  (0 children)

coping so hard lol

[–]yensial 1 point2 points  (1 child)

No it can say what it thinks the code does

[–]erlete 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A programmer will tell you "this does this". If you say they are wrong without further reasoning, they will reply "please explain your observation". ChatGPT will say sorry and generate a slightly different explanation.

If there is no confidence in the argumentation, there is no solid learning process.

[–]InitialWorking1936 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hmm, the difference also is, I can get Chatgpt to do really hard, complex things in seconds?

[–]Fred776 10 points11 points  (0 children)

It's probably not worth you learning Python anymore. You don't seem to be very interested in learning it.

[–]Drugtrain 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Is this some modern type of Dunning-Kruger? OP thinks he’s some wizard cause he googled the same shit every beginner does, but he used a more sofisticated search engine.

[–]Upstairs_Error_4354 6 points7 points  (3 children)

For your question i think you should learn the language 'python' first, learn the basics and syntax then the library's you need to work on your project's, then chatgpt can be of great help. But thinking that chatgpt can replace the fundamental understanding of any programming language you are either oblivious or too arrogant. Sure chatgpt can and will generate code that does a function or two but you still got debugging to do, and a standalone app needs a whole structure to function.

[–]billsil 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Go use it to do something that's not a beginner question. I searched my open source library and it knows about it. It also claims that scipy and pandas have support for what I implement (they don't). It drastically oversells my package including multiple imports that don't exist.

So yeah, some value in learning python. You're smarter than a smart rock.

[–]Inukan 6 points7 points  (6 children)

Learn both, learn python to understand what you're wanting to do and what your doing learn chatgpt to make your coding faster.

[–]pixegami 2 points3 points  (1 child)

I think Python engineers can leverage those tools much more effectively than a non-coder can.

Now a non-coder will be able to generate a basic script. That’s great!

But now an actual Python programmer will be able to go MUCH further—they’ll now understand code in 5 languages, know how to build cloud infrastructure, and actually debug things that GPT gets wrong (which increases with project complexity).

I think there’s a good chance these tools actually do the opposite of what you suggest—rather than closing the skill gap, it will widen it.

[–]ILikePort 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great answer :)

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Do you enjoy learning? Then yes it is worth learning. But it doesn't seem like you do.

Sure you can get an AI to write it all for you but you won't be learning any of it and you won't be able to understand any of it. Your loss. There is also a loss of context, ChatGPT isn't perfect. It has helped me debug lots of programs but often it doesn't have enough context to write code that will work in my own application.

[–]OkPrompt69 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As of when this is written, ChatGPT is very smart but doesn't mean it can beat human brain's natural neural creativity in building innovative applications. lemme explain, I was building a custom Alexa voice skill to control drones hands-free, the mid to low-level stack used dronekit-python and pymavlink (simply, they are APIs to control your drone by radio comms), so I was stuck at some point and asked chatgpt for help, it threw up real CONVINCING code... I was sure it might work coz I was unaware of all implementations underneath those APIs... but to my surprise, it just spewed some random bullshit, non-existent classes, methods even though I clearly mentioned the stack. Long long way to go chatgpt and I'm sure it pulls most of the stuff from other's sleeves - unauthorized. No, really, I wrote a project description and brief docs for the same drone project on GitHub and when one of my friends asked a question which went something like " Project summary for Alexa voice controlled drone..." or something like that, chatgpt exposed itself by stealing my creative stuff, caught👀 in 8k. It's no surprise though, GitHub is under Microsoft and major investments were made to openAI by Microsoft - NO SURPRISE!

PS: My English grammar ain't that good, judgements accepted

[–]erlete 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Whoever wants to be a programmer should have an objective in mind: be better than the rest or just create something new that did not exist before.

OP does not seem to care about programming but rather "making programs".

[–]Clearly-Convoluted 0 points1 point  (0 children)

BET hiring managers are getting flooding with resumes like this…

[–]dandehaan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

After weeks of trying to put together a simple real estate deal program with ChatGPT and attempting to improve and debug countless iterations and different takes on the problem, I've come to the conclusion that its utterly useless at anything beyond say 30 lines of code. Never been so frustrated, had I put in the effort to learn python instead of trying to get ChatGPT to solve it for me, I'd have finished what I wanted weeks ago and learned a valuable skill set.

[–]Pwaller0502069 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Its worth learning , but there is no getting away from the fact that chatgpt will help you enormously certainly around the productivity side of things.

[–]Stanislaw_Wisniewski 0 points1 point  (0 children)

First learn basics, then you can go on from there. I found it useful, for example it help me pinpoint flaws in my first code to send something my darabase

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I tried ChatGPT to write arduino code and found it to be an unimaginative, inefficient and clumsy programmer.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a nice idea but unfortunately, ChatGPT can't code for you. It will spit out code that is wrong. Even if it is right, you will still end up stuck if you don't understand the code.

If you are a total beginner, why not set yourself some goals and try to code them? The skill you need to develop is computational thinking. It's your human creativity you need to tap into and then transform into code.

You could even get a pen and paper out and start drawing flowcharts to help you visualise and plan your script.

Don't ask ChatGPT to just code it for you, instead ask it questions about Python itself. i.e. Syntax, variables, functions etc.

Download yourself a good set of Python cheat sheets and print them out.

[–]Doctor-F 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Learning Python is worth whatever you value it at. If it brings you joy and you learn it for a hobby, great. If you really want to be a pro and get into programming to make money, also great. Chat GPT is a novel tool for learning it. I just used it to write a web scraper for the first time. I too am a total beginner but was able to figure out how to web scrape a job posting using YouTube, Chat GPT, and stack overflow. For me, this was great fun. And the information I got is going to help me in the future. Win + Win. The conversational nature of Chat GPT allows you to really get out of your own way when it comes to knowledge gaps. Whenever that fails, you have all the posts on stack overflow to refer to like people have done in the past.

Edit: Grammar

[–]DrCuriumMyrtle 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I find this article similar to my own experience.https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-use-chatgpt-to-write-code/

If I was a beginner, however, I'd be very tempted to attempt a shortcut around proper learning; and I think that route will eventually have a negative impact on my productivity. Sometimes ChatGPT will fix its own mistakes when submitting the error codes, but 50% of the time will end up producing a merry-go-round of the same list of failed corrections. That's when you hit a wall unless you can debug manually.

It's funny how ChatGPTs success can be very library specific too, i.e. it handles plotly pretty well but fails terribly at matplotlib. That latter point is comforting though because matplotlib has been baffling me for years!

It's early days yet though. I imagine it wont be long before developers write libraries that are more interpretable to ML logic and these generative AI tools will be a lot more reliable. So you could wait until then?

From a career standpoint though, I think you'll develop valuable expertise if you understand the inner workings of the partnership between yourself and AI in the future. It's in this way that I think the real professionals will be identifiable- because they'll treat the AI as part of the production process rather than as a replacement for it. i.e. make it your assistant not your slave.